South Africa’s Jacob Zuma and the Deployment of Christianity in the Public Sphere

Abstract

Through the dialogue between an emerging pan-Africanist political scholar and a Christian theologian, this study interrogates key aspects of the deployment of Christianity in the public domain under the presidency of Jacob Zuma. After giving an overview of Zuma’s controversial public career, the article focuses on the role of religion and culture in Zuma’s political demagogy, and particularly on his deployment of the Pentecostalized public culture. A “product” of the ANC’s moral absolutism which got out of control, Zuma can be seen—it is argued—as an emblem of the entanglement of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity and politics in South Africa post-1994, and perhaps as a part of a broader global trend toward religious-populist politics.

Keywords:

• South Africa
• Jacob Zuma
• Christianity
• politics
• Pentecostal
• charismatic
• church

ORCID

Jakub Urbaniak http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4375-932X

Notes

1 We use the term “the politics of religion” to capture all the aspects of the intersection of politics and religion, including various cultural and socio-economic dynamics inherent in their mutual relationship, be it symbiotic or dialectic.

2 The National Interfaith Leadership Council (NILC) merged with the National Religious Leaders Forum (NRLF) to form the National Interfaith Council of South Africa (NICSA) in 2011.

3 Currently, part of the province of KwaZulu-Natal.

4 This (then) 31-year old woman, whose real name was Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, and to whom Zuma was like an uncle and a father-figure, passed away in 2016; she has since become an icon of anti-rape culture activism in South Africa.

5 Since the Report of the former Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, issued on 14 October 2016 (Madonsela 2016), an umbrella term “state capture” has been used to describe a systemic political corruption in which private interests have a major impact on a state’s decision-making processes.

6 In a book titled The President’s Keepers (2018), investigative journalist Jacques Pauw (2018) provides an account of what he referred to as a ‘shadow mafia state’ which had captured the security and prosecution state institutions. According to Pauw, during Zuma’s political reign the country was characterized by an illegitimate dual system of government: there was a democratically elected government, and a rogue shadow government — a nepotistic state within the statutory state.

7 For instance, in June 2018 a pro-Zuma lobby group announced that it would launch a new political party to “punish” the ANC for ousting Zuma as president. Made up of prominent NPC leaders and bishops, “business bodies,” traditional leaders and taxi operators, the group presented itself under the banner of Mazibuyele Emasisweni, isiZulu for “let us return to our cultures” (Harper and Bendile 2018).

8 In the South African society, around 80% of people identify themselves as Christians, and the great majority admits that faith plays a pivotal role in their lives (Erasmus 2005, 139). In addition, “an 11-year-old [now 12] poll concluded that a third of urban SAs are Neo-Pentecostalist. Today’s figure is almost certainly higher” (Van Wyk 2019b).

9 These would be often seen as embodied by, depending on the context, Western/white liberal media or the “coconut (black on the outside but white on the inside) sold-outs” who have betrayed the ideals of the liberation movement. With regard to the former, in 2015, Zuma told the Russian news channel RT that “criticisms of ANC policies formulated by Western powers and media” should be seen “as sinister maneuvers by ‘colonial’ states who cynically pretend to care about South Africa's development while their real motive is only to take natural resources” (Matthee 2016, 21). Regarding the latter option, the ANC under Zuma often accused the first black leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA), Mmusi Maimane, among others, of being a puppet of a white elitist movement (Reporter 2016).

10 Kaunda (2018:, 135) points out that Zuma’s ordination by Bishop Ben Mthethwa, which took place in 2007 in Durban when Zuma was the ANC Deputy President, symbolized taking on the spiritual functions of a priest and prophet which would eventually score him electoral votes with Pentecostal-Charismatic churches in the 2009 elections.

11 Even though there are a number of overlaps in their spiritual approaches, the PCCs tend to be hostile towards the AICs, since in the PCCs’ dualistic worldview centered upon the spiritual warfare, “dark forces are often identified as traditional healers and witches who work with various witch familiars, such as snakes, mermaids, tokoloshes (short, hairy tricksters with enormous penises), cats, owls and a range of otherworldly beings (Van Wyk 2014, 37–58, 145–148, 153). Good [Pentecostal and Charismatic] Christians fight these forces through exorcisms, vigils, prayers, sacrifices, fasts, campaigns and spiritual ‘burning’” (Van Wyk 2019a, 118).

12 In 2009, it was renamed the Commission on Religious and Tradition Affairs.

13 We admit that the view of the African Pentecostalism presented here is somewhat narrow and one-sided. In this study, we focused on particular, mainly negative expressions of the Pentecostal theology which pertain to Zuma’s deployment of Christianity in the public domain. In another article, we give a more balanced account of PCCs. See Urbaniak and Khorommbi 2020.

14 In South Africa, in recent years, the term “blesser” started to be used to designate a kind of sugar daddy, an older man who often has multiple girlfriends he lavishes with gifts, in exchange for sex and companionship. See Mampane 2018. Referred to, among other titles, as a “blesser for free education in South Africa” (Mthethwa 2018), Zuma has been called a “blesser” in the sexual sense of the word as well, though the exact nature of his relationships with young women he “supported” has never been determined (O’Reilly and Wicks 2018) – hence, pun fully intended.

15 Suffice it to recall the words of Zuma’s successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, who described the reign of his predecessor as “nine lost years” (Mtyala 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jakub Urbaniak

Jakub Urbaniak (PhD, UBO Brest; DTh/MTh, UAM Poznan) is the head of the Research Department at St Augustine College of South Africa, a Catholic University in Johannesburg, and a research fellow at the University of the Free State. Polish by birth, African by heart, he has been living in South Africa since 2010—and this is the place that he calls home. His current research focuses on the intersection of decolonization and Christianity, particularly in the context of the South African #MustFall movement and African religiosity.

Tshinyalani Khorommbi

Tshinyalani Khorommbi is a researcher who specializes in regional integration and peacebuilding in Africa. He is also a lecturer in History and Political Science at St Augustine College of South Africa, Johannesburg. He recently graduated with a Masters in Governance and Regional Integration at the Pan-African University Institute for Governance, Humanities and Social Sciences, hosted within University of Yaoundé II, Soa, Cameroon.